LETTER XI 



THE Knights Templars?- who have been mentioned in a 

 former letter, had considerable property in Selborne\ and 

 also a preceptory at Sudington, now called Southington, a 

 hamlet lying one mile to the east of the village. Bishop 

 Tanner mentions only two such houses of the Templars in 

 all the county of Southampton, viz., Godesfield, founded by 



1 THE MILITARY ORDERS of the RELIGIOUS. 



The Knights Hospitalars of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards called Knights 

 of Rhodes, now of Malta, came into England about the year noo, I Hen. I. 



The Knights Templars came into England pretty early in Stephen's reign, 

 which commenced 1135. The order was dissolved in 1312, and their estates 

 given by Act of Parliament to the Hospitalars in 1323 (all in Edw. II.) though 

 many of their estates were never actually enjoyed by the said Hospitalars. Vid. 

 Tanner, p. 24, 10. 



The commandries of the Hospitalars , and preceptories of Templars, were each 

 subordinate to the principal house of their respective religion in London. Although 

 these are the different denominations, which Tanner at p. 37 assigns to the cells 

 of these different orders, yet throughout the work very frequent instances occur of 

 preceptories attributed to the Hospitalars ; and if in some passages of " Notitia 

 Monast" commandries are attributed to the Templars, it is only where the place 

 afterwards became the property of the Hospitalars, and so is there indifferently 

 styled preceptory or commandry ; see p. 243, 263, 276, 577, 678. But, to account for 

 the first observed inaccuracy, it is probable the preceptories of the Templars, when 

 given to the Hospitalars, were still vulgarly, however, called by their old name of 

 preceptories ; whereas in propriety societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as 

 has been said) commandries. And such deviation from the strictness of expression 

 in this case might occasion those societies of Hospitalars also to be indifferently 

 called preceptories, which had originally been vested in them, having never be- 

 longed to the Templars at all. See in Archer, p. 609; Tanner, p. 300, col. I. 

 720, n. e. 



It is observable that the very statute for the dissolution of the Hospitalars holds 

 the same language ; for there, in the enumeration of particulars occur "commandries, 

 preceptories." Codex, p. 1 190. Now this intercommunity of names, and that in an 

 Act of Parliament too, made some of our ablest antiquaries look upon a preceptory 



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